


Miles in the Future

by pickledragon



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, Stylistic, at least its trying to be, focus on impressionistic recollections, offscreen minor character death, poem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 06:52:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12625554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickledragon/pseuds/pickledragon
Summary: Home is where the heart is and your heart is behind an oak door.A citizen of Night Vale in the aftermath of Old Oak Doors. Everything has changed. But everything is also the same.





	Miles in the Future

**Author's Note:**

> Collab fic with my friend who does not have an Ao3 account.

Screams on the wind bring dust,  
sprinkling silence across the town.  
Abandoned as it may be,  
The Smiling God is watching. 

_There are people wandering through the street-_  
their eyes covered and their minds opened,  
unwilling to look towards the sky.  
Hands outstretched- 

_"Have you seen my family?"_

_There is viscera on the ground and a light above._

_Miles in the future, the Voice of Night Vale is watching the revolution,_  
standing proudly by his town.  
But right now all you can hear are screams. 

Rubies coagulate as puddles form.  
Training citizens how to behave, keep smiling to stay safe. 

When in Rome tear down their statues, walk beside them and stab those important. 

Hold their values in your mind, keep their ideals close and deny your purpose. 

You exist only for their amusment and they control the aspects that flowed so freely.

_This is not good._  
Feet clatter through the streets,  
something is happening that you have no part in.  
All you know-  
that the buildings are abandoned,  
the shops are closed,  
no one is breathing but you-  
panting your way across the town. 

_Time travels too slowly._  
At least if you could just run farther into the future  
the conflict would be ended,  
a two year finale reached-  
and peace or a semblance  
would be restored.  
But right now,  
you need to keep running.  
Searching for something that will only  
come with time. 

And the silence is overbearing as it echoes off of the walls. Wrapping it's arms around you pulling you steadily closer to the inky depths that what was once. Your thoughts, as steady as they seem, are not your own. 

You are the hero of this epic,  
though you struggle to breathe.  
Steps taken on shaking legs and body quaking with everying shuddering expanse of the lungs under the flesh that holds basic humanity together. 

You have a purpose.  
It's out of your reach.  
Memories of the past refracting,  
As you reach.  
Yes that's your family, they smiled so kind.  
Too bad their smiles couldn't please the Smiling God this time.

_You're searching for what cannot be found_  
(at least not now).  
There's no end in sight.  
You sit on the cracked pavement,  
liquid soaking into your jeans.  
The sky is rapidly flashing between pure white and a planet of purple and a writhing mass of...  
Well, you'd better not look too close at that one. 

_You hear your radio crackle from its place in your battered bag-_  
You'd thought you lost it.  
It's up to your ear, and the tinny voice grounds you where you are.  
There is a revolution going on-  
the voice is in the thick of it. 

_You turn it off._

_And you slowly rise to your feet-  
keep on going. _

No time left to dwell on anything.  
For time itself is a sentient being,  
It disproves of your negative emotions. Time has been brainwashed. Non the less, forawrd. A play button pressed twice. The sky is waiting. Hovering. Explaining, though shattering voices fall on useless ears. Deaf to what is around them, too loud to think. 

You question. Everything. Sucess and failure. Perhaps this is simply a record broken, played one to many times with a scratch that it gets stuck on as it repeats it's ryhmes. Is the revolution what will change all in the midst of darkness casted by the sun? 

Can you strive and achieve with so many depending on your very being. It's stressful, yes. Now panic. It's for the best. You hungered for change and it came, and the change (in the form of outsiders) destroyed and maimed.

_No such thing as a peaceful revolution. No such thing as quiet regrets,_  
least not for you.  
The flashes in the sky are more frequent-  
You think you hear glass shattering.  
Nothing on the ground,  
nothing falling from the sky.  
Just the same blankness with clouds floating across it. Almost normal.  
wait...  
It's normal. 

_Time must have marched forward while you stomped through the wreckage of your town._  
The change you craved,  
the variety from a tyrannical council,  
from police like an open secret to something, anything different.  
It happened.  
But you weren't satisfied. And now everything is the same. 

_Everything is back to normal._  
The sky has settled into its usual mixture of dark night and middle of the day.  
The helicopters are back,  
but there is still carnage all around. 

_You can't find your family._

_And things did change,_  
but everything's back  
right where you started-  
and without a voice to follow. 

_You should have been careful what you wished-  
you got what you wanted. _

Now the rubies pour, oh, so many of them, bouncing and shattering and sparkling. Coagulating underneath those of the town who once were neighbors. Now corpses. 

Are you satisfied. The question of the century. Are you now little with the sparks of an uprising. No. It's guilt. It eats away at your from the inside. Anything that was and where is gone and none. 

It doesn't exist. It never did. Smile you ungrateful child the smiling God is scowling upon you. Carnage has always dusted these streets. 

Everyone is the same.  
Glassy eyes.  
Colors too bright.  
Yellow and red clashing with purple.  
Smiles stretched a bit too tight.  
It's all the same, except you. are. alone.

_The police take to the streets, chase the yellow back to their town._

_You can still see their eyes  
wherever you go. _

_Listening to the radio,_  
a 24 hour mourning session for a lost love  
trapped in a desert far from here.  
You wonder if that's where the people with wide smiles ran to,  
their fun in your town had,  
needed a new place to destroy. 

_Things changed,  
but they ended up the same. _

_Their eyes are empty._

_The corporate workers sneer at you on their way out of the city limits._  
One of the Erikas gives you a wink as they push the suits out.  
You wave numbly back. 

_Starting the long trek back to your home,  
(if its still standing that is)_

_it is quiet again._

Over bearing. Swallowing. Echoing. Simotaneously pressing both inwards and outwards. You want to explode. You're silent though. They watch you now, small hidden smiles full of despair and regret. Of pity. 

The tears fall fully. Every day. The rubble from so long ago sits heavily inside the cracked walls of your home. Maybe it was recent... Perhaps... It was earlier today. Time has ran away and no one really knows anymore. 

The voice is silent. Speaks none at all. The town is worried. They don't panic. They pity. They know. Home is where the heart is and your heart is behind an oak door. 

So they clean up the gore. Go about how they can. Shy away from anything yellow, eyes not meeting as they find details on shoes and on the ground. 

Sobs break the silence. They are ignored. You wonder as you wander why people don't console said sentient being. You don't know that they belong to you.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: learningthomas.tumblr.com  
> Original content: pickledragonblog.weebly.com


End file.
